William Beecher, who as a reporter for the New York Times exposed President Richard M. Nixon’s secret bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam War and who later won a Pulitzer Prize for The Boston Globe, died on 9 February at his home in Wilmington. , NC It was 90.
His daughter, Lori Beecher, and son-in-law, Marc Burstein, confirmed the death.
President Nixon ordered the bombings, codenamed Operation Menu, in March 1969 in response to increasing attacks by the North Vietnamese Army and South Vietnamese rebels based in Cambodia, a neutral country. The campaign was so secret that even William P. Rogers, the Secretary of State, was unaware of it.
Mr. Beecher’s article on the bombings, which appeared on the front page of The Times on May 9, 1969, noted that in the previous two weeks alone, some 5,000 tons of munitions had been dropped on Cambodia.
He also noted that while there were no plans for a major ground invasion, “small groups” of US reconnaissance forces were infiltrating Cambodia “to ensure that accurate intelligence could be obtained to provide ‘profitable’ targets for the bombers”.
The article caused an immediate reaction in the White House. Within two weeks, General Alexander Haig, deputy to Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser, asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to tap Mr. Beecher’s phone in an effort to identify who had leaked the information.
The decision to tap Mr. Beecher’s phone, along with those of 16 other journalists and government officials, was an early demonstration of the Nixon administration’s willingness to use legally dubious means of obtaining information or to silence critics.
Mr. Beecher was already an irritant to the administration, and remained so, with hoodlums about arms control plans and spy flights over China based on well-placed sources within the administration.
To many people’s surprise, he left the Times in 1973 to work in the Department of Defense as deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. He returned to journalism in 1975 as a correspondent for The Boston Globe, where he covered international affairs.
He was part of a team that won a 1983 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting with a 56-page article on the state of the nuclear arms race—a late-career achievement he wore lightly.
“Winning a Pulitzer didn’t hurt, but I wasn’t going around telling news sources that I had won,” he told the Harvard Crimson in 2005. “I wouldn’t say it made much of a difference. “
William Beecher was born May 27, 1933, in Framingham, Mass., the son of Gertrude and Samuel Beecher. His father was a grocer.
He studied government at Harvard, where he worked as a managing editor for The Crimson and as a campus correspondent for The Boston Globe. He graduated in 1955. Among his classmates were David Halberstam, J. Anthony Lukas, and Sydney H. Schanberg, who would also go on to have storied careers as reporters for the Times.
He earned a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of Journalism and then spent two years in the Army before joining The St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
He married Eileen Brick in 1958. She died in 2020. Along with his daughter Lori, he was survived by three other daughters, Diane Beecher, Nancy Kotz and Debbie Spartin. and 10 grandchildren.
He moved to Washington in the early 1960s to cover the Supreme Court for the Wall Street Journal and then joined the Times in 1966.
He made five tours in Vietnam during the war. On one trip, along with Mr Haig, their helicopter was shot down over the Mekong Delta, although all survived with minor injuries. On the other hand, he learned that his wife was going to have twins – news that was conveyed to him by his partner, Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
After working at The Boston Globe, Mr. Beecher served as Washington bureau chief for The Minneapolis Star Tribune and as director of public relations for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
He also wrote eight novels, a memoir, and a cookbook, and in retirement taught journalism at the University of Maryland.
Many successful reporters recognize their need in life early on. But Mr. Beecher said he didn’t find his until late in his undergraduate career.
“I thought I was either going into journalism or law school,” he told The Crimson. “I thought I might be bored in law school, but I knew I wouldn’t be bored in journalism.”
